


Before the Dawn

by samiraxlula



Series: Life is Like an Hourglass [7]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Detective Comics (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Gen, Jason Todd Has Mental Health Issues, Jason Todd is Robin, POV Jason Todd, Pre-Robin Tim Drake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25006993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samiraxlula/pseuds/samiraxlula
Summary: Tim receives a visitor at the Drake Mansion.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Series: Life is Like an Hourglass [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1723129
Comments: 5
Kudos: 140





	Before the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Jason's POV set during "Chapter 3: Just Ethereal Memories" of Mourning Bird Calls.

After a few hours of restless sleep, interrupted by nightmares that could not be dispelled by even the most reliable lucid-dreaming techniques Bruce had taught him, Jason couldn’t have even been bothered to make a determined effort to push his more personal apprehensions aside. 

Though he did hesitate before the Crest Hill gated community, viewing the mansions before him with a great discomfort filling his stomach and realizing that he would have to go through with this to obtain his necessary evidence, his mind brought forth all the grievances that held him back.

_There was a loud buzzing of white noise in his ears as he took in the photos pinned to his wall and committed all the fine details to memory, his eyes completely blank and devoid of feeling._

_“Are you going to be alright?” She had asked him as his eyes dulled to the point of looking dead._

_“Sure, why wouldn’t I be alright?”_

_But for Jason insanity was less like falling into the pit and more like the drowning part. It was consuming and disorientating, hard to breathe against and even harder to fight against._

_It was with a gasp and the rush of water that muted a scream of pure and consuming fear as he woke to a clear, green consciousness with the daughter of the Demon’s Head pulling him out to run from the assassins now chasing after them._

_So as he sat there staring at the wall, his hands going numb, he experienced a moment of clarity that would be the driving force of what he would soon return to Gotham to do._

_Jason was nothing and he was no one. He had never mattered, not to Bruce or anyone else. He was a stupid child who thought for a few happy naive years, that he had found a home._

_He now knew that was a lie._

_He had been nothing more than another kid behind a faceless mask. Robin. And now there was another kid to prove his point. A replacement just like that._

_When Jason gathered himself again, he rebuilt himself on the foundation of instability and madness that Ra’s had promised._

These past three days had been nothing but flashbacks and breakdowns for him, all thankfully unseen by Alfred as he kept to his room while being grounded. 

He had hated Tim Drake from the moment he had seen his grinning face in those pictures pinned to his wall. Hated him the second he ran out of that bar to see his little camera and irritating hero-worshipping eyes. Hated him the instant he ran out of that bathroom, insisting on helping. 

And now here he was, perched on the kid’s snowy balcony with the startled rich brat stumbling back in shock.

“R-Robin!” 

Jason struggled with whether to be incredibly uncomfortable or guilty at feeling enraged with a clearly neglected ten-year-old child who had done nothing to him at this point in time. 

He settled on bewilderment as he noticed a few framed photos of him as Robin, Nightwing and Batman all positioned next to the kid’s bed on a side table with his alarm clock. 

When he pointed them out with a raised eyebrow, making his way into the kid’s room, Tim looked like he was about to have a heart attack when he slammed them face down and turned beet-red. 

“You weren’t at the docks a few days ago, were you?” Examining a small desk in Tim’s bedroom with a few different cameras and lenses, Jason thought back to that feeling of being spied on with Bullock. 

“No, I was walking around the city.”

While he would give that Tim had a talent for being able to sneak around near bats, he doubted that what he had been suspicious of on the pier was a ten-year-old fanboy. And considering that their lead had been sniped only an hour later, he would have to file the theories away for later review. 

He had come here for a reason, after all.

“You wanna show me that picture you were talking about?”

“Oh, right.” Tim snapped out of whatever thoughts were running through his mind before handing him an envelope he had put a few pictures in that he thought might have been helpful.

Recognizing the man in the picture and knowing that Bullock would too, Jason deposited the evidence in his belt carefully as he thanked the kid, eager to leave the mansion as quickly as he could. 

However, not having even taken three steps, Jason found that he was unable to move a single step further, before looking at his black and yellow cape behind him to find Tim clutching it like a lifeline.

“Will you come back?”

Jason had to pause for a long minute to read the desperate loneliness on Tim’s expression, uncertain of what to do with it. 

He liked kids, he really did. Most of what he did as both Robin and the Red Hood was done with the intention of protecting women and children and shielding them from the horrors that he himself went through. 

This kid in particular, though...he was different for so many reasons. 

“Doesn’t anyone worry about you?” Jason had to ask with a furrowed brow. 

Surely his parents had to leave him with some sort of babysitter or housekeeper, right? He knew that Tim mainly went to boarding schools as soon as he was old enough, but currently he was enrolled in the same school as Jason was, which was only open for day students.

“I try not to be a bother.”

Jason didn’t like that answer and showed it, even if he still hesitated to do anything for him, wavering for a moment when Tim let go of his cape.

 _Oh, what the hell._ Reaching over to grab a sticky note pad, the costumed teen made the decision to write down the number of a burner phone he carried on him for reasons he kept from Bruce and Alfred. 

“How about you call me sometime. If you need help or something.”


End file.
